Ideas and Thoughts from an EdTech

Here’s 4 minutes of random video of some of my day at Edubloggercon. Nothing fancy here but a few moments of learning.  You might get a sense of some of the passion and energy in this short clips. That’s more or less why I came. I came to hear stories, share a few and spend time together.

I’ve used the video annotations within youtube. You’ll have to view it on youtube to see them. I thought others could annotate but it may not be possible.

I’m not sure if this is “the” original but listening to the Spark podcast on the plane, I discovered this gem and had to share it.

The story behind how this site was discovered is interesting enough but the fact that Jamie Livingston took almost 7,000 photos for 18 years is astonishing. But the stories behind the photos are gripping. In 18 years in anyone’s life, it will be filled with everything from highly emotional to extremely mundane. This is life. And death. Jamie, a filmmaker from New York city died in October of 1997 at the age of 41. Shortly before he died of cancer, he got engaged. This is the photo of the engagement ring and the blurred figure in the back is his fiance. You can sense the sadness and irony in this image.

So as I approach the half way point of my photos of the day for one year, I realize more and more that this is a diary of my life. Boring to most, but I’m trying to capture life each day. As I go through this process, I’m convinced more and more that visual literacy, images must be recognized by educators as more than icing on the cake of communication. Sometimes the addition of text can provide context, other times, the picture itself is enough.  Unfortunately our text bias schools continue to place photography and visual literacy well behind writing. More and more I know this to be misguided.

Listen to the entire story, you’ll be glad you did.

Sheryl, Darren, Wes and I are pleased to announce the keynotes for this fall’s K12 Online Conference.

Stephen Heppell, Alice Barr, Cheryl Oakes, Bob Sprankle, Gardner Campbell, Chris Lehmann, Vicki Davis, and Julie Lindsay will all be keynoting this year. What a fantastic lineup of presenters! If you’re not familar with these folks, you’ll be in for quite a treat. Each one has a unique perspective and voice that will challenge and inspire you.

For more information on these speakers and the conference in general please visit the K12 Online site.

You’ve got about 2 weeks until proposals are due. Also, do us a favour, if you’ve been a presenter, participator or volunteer in the past 2 years, how about posting a little plug for the conference on your website?  If you like, add this little badge to your sidebar as well.

Here’s the page with html code you’ll need.

I got a Flip today and was curious to see how it stood up to the Sony Net-Sharing Camera and my Canon SD750’s video mode.

The Flip is definitely the easiest to use. No doubt this is great feature. The quality is decent but my test shows the Canon SD750 as having a slightly better quality. I wasn’t surprised since I had read this a few weeks ago. So I took the three cameras out for a test. I did a simple pan across and zoom of the same area. Here are the results:

The bottom line is for schools/classrooms and many folks, the Flip will provide a great way to document events. All three operate like storage devices in terms of importing the video to your machine. The Sony definitely does not play nice with the Mac but having used it on the Windows machine it is a great solution as it does not need any installation to work. Our IT guys quite liked that feature. The Flip built in software looks okay as well but I didn’t really use it.
As I said in the video, I’m not much for instantly uploading. I think much like writing, editing, revising and simple cleaning up even if you’re not doing a full blow production. But still, these cheap cameras have huge potential.

It’s not really for Saskatchewan eyes only, I just say that because it’s not likely those from outside the province or for that matter outside Moose Jaw would be interested.

My daughter is doing a concert on July 19th. If you like Nora Jones/Diana Krall/Joni Mitchell  you’ll like Meredith. Ticket information below. For those outside the area,  I might stream it but am not sure of the internet availability.

A week from today I head to San Antonio for my first NECC. I’m interested in some sessions but mostly interested in talking and learning with a boat load of people from my network. Knowing that many of these folks are progressive, innovative and deep thinkers makes me wonder why the organization that runs the conference is taking this stance.

It’s already been talked about here, here, here and likely in more place. They’ve all spoke about it in detail and added their own perspectives. I’m sure that ISTE has some legal or CYA reason for doing this but at the same time, why is that Tlt and Northern Voice in fact, encourage folks to record and share content?

Is this a US/Canada thing? Are we Canadians just as litigious minded? What am I missing here?

Maybe someone from ISTE will find this post in their technorati feed and respond.  Seems weird.

Tuesday, students from Craik were able to present their learning with cellphones to Liz Kolb and about 20 ustream guests. The stream was a bit wonky but I did manage to record the hour in 3 segments. The last recording is likely the most interesting as it features more of a conversation with students, Liz and Ustream questions.

Here they are in case you’re interested:

Rick, Rob and I gathered for an unraveling of Tlt and Edupunk. We likely didn’t solve much but enjoy sharing our thoughts.

Show notes

 

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